Name Lamotte-Picquet Commissioned 5 March 1927 Construction started 17 January 1923 Length 175 m | Laid down 17 January 1923 Out of service November 1941 Launched 21 March 1924 Builder DCNS | |
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Namesake Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de la Motte Fate Disarmed November 1941; sunk in harbour January 1945. | ||
Lamotte-Picquet was a French Duguay-Trouin-class light cruiser, launched in 1924, and named in honour of the 18th century admiral count Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de la Motte.
Service history
Completed in 1927, Lamotte-Picquet was based at Brest until 1933, serving with the 3rd Light Division, of which she was flagship. In 1935, she was sent to the Far East, where at the outbreak of war in 1939, she patrolled around French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies.
After the French surrender in Europe, tension developed along the border with Siam (now Thailand). These flared into hostilities between Siam and Vichy France in December 1940. In January 1941, Lamotte-Picquet became the flagship of a small squadron, the Groupe Occasionnel. It was formed on 9 December at Cam Ranh Bay, near Saigon, under the command of Capitaine de Vaisseau Bérenger. The squadron also consisted of the colonial sloops Dumont d'Urville and Amiral Charner, and the older sloops Tahure and Marne. The Groupe Occasionnel with Lamotte-Picquet at its head, met a Thai squadron of two torpedo boats and a coastal defence ship in the Battle of Koh Chang on 14 January 1941. The Thai squadron was defeated, with both torpedo boats sunk and the coastal defence ship run aground. The victory was for naught, however, as the Japanese forced a settlement in the Franco-Thai War in favour of the Thai. Apart from a visit to Osaka, Japan in September 1941, Lamotte-Picquet was thereafter restricted in her activities.
From the following month, Lamotte-Picquet was used as a training hulk. She was sunk in harbour, on 12 January 1945, by U.S carrier based aircraft from Task Force 38 during the South China Sea raid. The remains of the hull were scrapped after the war.